Saint John’s Outdoor University is an organization that has attracted, by luck or

design (or both), many of the most driven and passionate individuals around – from our students to our volunteers to our professional staff. This aspect has helped us survive – and thrive – during the last several months when we found ourselves with a vacant assistant director position and a plate full of educational classes, land maintenance and stewardship projects, and a national outdoor competition to dominate. Now we are thrilled to announce that Kyle Rauch will be filling this vacancy and bringing his unique passion for environmental stewardship and outdoor leadership to Outdoor U.

Kyle is coming to us from Tennessee where he has been working as a recreation specialist and program manager for the Fort Campbell MWR-Outdoor Recreation program for the U.S. department of defense. He has been coordinating, planning and facilitating outdoor recreation and adventure programs, including rock climbing, ropes courses, hiking, paddling, mountain biking, youth activities and interpretive classes for both military and civilian communities around Fort Campbell. Kyle also has experience in environmental education, teaching classes to a variety of audiences on ecology, geology, natural resources and more at both Northern Illinois University – Lorado Taft Field Campus and Pennsylvania State Parks.

Additional interests in stewardship and citizen science developed in his previous roles as a trail crew leader for the Student Conservation Association and a citizen science research assistant and teacher/naturalist at the Great Smokey Mountains Institute. Kyle has a B.A. in geography and environmental planning from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Kyle’s position is the environmental education coordinator for CSB/SJU and community programming at Outdoor U, a position painted with a broad brush for the variety it encompasses. From planning community events like College-ville Colors and the Maple Syrup Festivals, to mentoring facilitators taking a group on a wilderness trip, to training Outdoor Leadership Center student staff on educating others about safe and enjoyable use of a variety of outdoor equipment, Kyle is an educator and mentor with extensive experience that will be able to facilitate the diversity of roles in his position well.

The simplest way to describe Kyle’s personal drive is to use his own words, “This is the world we live in; let’s learn about it.” The most poignant

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Kyle Rauch Joins the Outdoor U Staff Tanner Rayman ‘16

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“Kyle is a man that is apt at conveying his personal connection to the outdoors and encouraging others to do the same.”

Day three in the Outdoor U “office” had new environmental education coordinator Kyle Rauch on the tractor out at the sugar shack, diving straight into preparations for the maple syrup season. Ella Gray.

Like many others in an environmental field, I grew up camping and hiking, encouraged by my parents to

understand, explore and be at home in natural settings. In elementary school we had multi-day outdoor education experiences in and around Rocky Mountain National Park in both fourth and sixth grades. These experiences were formative, giving me a connection to nature and landscape early in life, even as my interests and experiences took me in a completely different direction through high school.

I chose to attend Saint Ben’s based almost entirely on a gut reaction drawing me to this place from (quite literally) the moment I visited the campus the first time. Four years of conversations in and out of the classroom, relationships with professors and students and perhaps most importantly, the encouragement to understand, explore and be at home in this landscape, reawakened that hunger from the formative experiences of my youth.

My personal trajectory in finding my passion for the environment is not unfamiliar to us at Saint John’s Outdoor University and is in fact, a significant part of our design. The Outdoor U mission serves as a reminder to all of us about what we do and why we do it:

Saint John’s Outdoor University provides environmental and outdoor education in pursuit of:

•Environmental literacy and connections to the natural world that motivate responsible environmental decisions;

•Leadership development and personal growth through experiential learning;

• Sustainable land use and conservation;•Learning, recreation and spiritual renewal in the Abbey

Arboretum and other great outdoor spaces.

We serve a diverse audience with our programs, from preK students to retirees, from passionate outdoor enthusiasts to those who have never been in a forest and never knew they’d ever want to be. We are incredibly efficient at touching the lives of more than 18,000 people annually with a small staff and a corps of dedicated students and community volunteers.

The staff and advisory council for Outdoor U now find ourselves in pursuit of big strategic questions: What have we done well the past ten years and what should we do better? How has our organization changed and how has our audience changed? How does what we do support our mission? Where should we direct our focus for the next 3-5 years to continue to be a relevant and valuable resource?

A mid-winter strategic planning retreat gave us the time and space to start answering those questions and begin setting goals for the future. We have a lot of exciting

ideas to explore and prioritize in the coming months - from when and how to use new technologies to more effectively teach and expose people to the natural world, to how to more fully embed outdoor experiences into the CSB/SJU college experience. One goal I am particularly excited about is a simple, and perhaps subtle, shift in how we think about how we serve you.

We have historically defined and geared our program-ming toward three main audiences: preK-12 students, CSB/SJU students and the general community. And while we’ll continue to offer programs to most effectively meet the unique needs of each of those groups, we’ll also evaluate and adjust those programs with an eye toward deepening your experiences.

We want to continue to touch people – once, twice, or many times – with formative outdoor and environmental experiences, the kind that encourage you to understand and explore and hopefully want to learn more. But we also want to more deliberately nurture the hunger that those formative experiences awaken – to deepen connections to the natural world that help people feel at home. And finally, we want to more actively cultivate continuing education and experiences for our most passionate, engaged and expert audiences. Five years from now, we hope to have made significant progress toward these goals.

That I find myself now working in an environmental field and pursuing a lifestyle connected to the natural world is not entirely by chance. My 18-year-old self might be completely surprised but my 10-year-old self, already at home in nature, may have known it would be so all along.

Jenny Kutter is the Outdoor U department coordinator. The story goes that the first time her parents put her in a canoe as a two-year-old, it became the only place she wanted to be the entire vacation (yet she wonders where her three-year-old gets her strong opinions).

In Pursuit Of... Jenny Kutter

aspect of Kyle’s character that stood out to me at our first meeting was his genuine curiosity about both the natural world and the different people that inhabit and impact it. He is a man that is apt at conveying his personal connection to the outdoors and encouraging others to do the same. He strives to dispel the growing disconnect between humanity and nature by sharing his experiences and passing his extensive knowledge on to all those he meets. He truly embodies the values of Saint John’s Outdoor University.

Kyle claims that one of his biggest motivations for his environmental interests occurred when he climbed Mount Katahdin in Maine, a mountain even Henry David Thoreau failed to climb (granted Kyle would tell you that Thoreau tried it at a more challenging time of year, but who’s counting). This was one of his first major day hikes that took him above the tree line. This hike proved inspirational to 20-year-old Kyle because it allowed him to really see why people pursue outdoor adventure. These days, Kyle has become the master of day hikes but still loves to explore the world anew with each trip.

As a student facilitator for the Peer Resource Program and an Outdoor U student employee, I was innately curious as to what Kyle’s motivations were for coming to the frozen-tundra of central Minnesota and also what his goals were for his new position. It is precisely the marriage of both outdoor recreation and environmental education that initially piqued his interest. When taking an adventurous group out rock-climbing, he wants to be able to tell them about the geology of the rock formations they’re climbing on, potentially opening their eyes to another connection to the activity – and vice versa.

Kyle has also expressed great interest in the natural history of our area. The sheer variety of possible exper-iences (i.e. cross-country skiing and maple syrup) and the cherished local history were large draws along with the rich outdoor culture of the area. Kyle, along with his wife and two young children, find community involvement to be integral to their lifestyle. They are a family of park explorers, canoers, and self-proclaimed car-camping experts.

Kyle’s goals for his new position are well-founded and have me looking forward to his presence even more. Kyle is ready to jump in head-first and become well-versed in our current programming while also looking for ways to engage an even broader audience. Long-term, he is looking to engage as many students as possible in diverse and far-reaching programs that will help to foster a greater appreciation for our natural setting. He is also passionate about introducing various forms of citizen-science so that

all community members can help to study, observe and preserve the Abbey Arboretum for future generations.

As a PRP facilitator, I am personally thrilled to have Kyle as our new mentor and organization head. His experience as an educator and his array of hard skills will be a profound resource as we plan wilderness trips, adventure-oriented campus events, and continue facilitating challenge courses for the community. Kyle is looking to inspire creativity and bring a fresh perspective to our programming. Kyle’s position with us college students is twofold in nature; he must assume the roles of both mentor and teacher to all of us. These roles will come naturally to Kyle as he integrates into our family of facilitators.

We are very pleased to introduce Kyle to our team. We look forward to learning from him and teaching him all we have to share. Stop by the Outdoor U offices to introduce yourself to our newest member! He would love to meet you.

Tanner Rayman is a junior biology major at Saint John’s University. As a member of the PRP, he pictures Sarah Gainey’s maniacal laughter as she passes the torch of “dealing with those hooligans” (Tanner’s words) to Kyle.

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Formative outdoor experiences from an early age are just one part of the design for life- long pursuit of environmental and outdoor education, as Jenny Kutter learned early on (even without a life jacket...it was 1982). Jerry myers.

As thrilled as we are to welcome Kyle Rauch as the new assistant director for environ-mental education at Outdoor U, we are equally excited to welcome his family - Stacey, Afton (age 6) and George - to our family here at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s. Kyle Rauch.

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3. Outdoor Champions.There is no better way to celebrate an OutdoorChampionship in Minnesota than to do it on a 0oF afternoon inFeb. More than 200 people came out to see the new outdoor gear, play winter games, take a horse-drawn wagon tour of the Sisters’ woods and just plain revel in our victory as the most outdoorsy campus in the USA! Photo by Katherine MaGuire.

4. TriAppleOn...it’s Hard Core. The 20th Annual Fruit at the Finish Triathlon is scheduled for Saturday, April 25 - another annual rite of spring, hosted by the Outdoor Leadership Center and Peer Resource Program. A team of Saint John’s Abbey monks is looking to three-peat their domination of theevent. Sign upnow to participateas an individual orin a team of three!Outdoor U Photo.

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Snapshots Jenny Kutter

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61. A Sticky Situation. The now iconic (at least according to Explore Minnesota’s Checkpoint MN Scavenger Hunt) Stickworks sculpture has been granted another season in the Abbey Arboretum prairie after it was once expected to be taken down this winter. We estimate that more than 50,000 people have visited the sculpture with many more enjoying it from the roadside. Photo by Rose Janssen.

2. Another Sticky Situation. Maple syrup season is upon us! About 1,000 taps were put out at Community Tapping Day on March 8. We love to usher in spring with 1,000 gradeschoolers, hundreds of college students and the many volunteers that make our syrup season special. Festivals this year are on Saturdays, March 28 & April 11.Photo by Patrick Deal.

5. Best Snowshoe Ever! Viewers of WCCO television in Minnesota voted Saint John’sAbbey Arboretum as the best place to snowshoe in Minnesota. While this winter’s snowfall hasleft avid snowshoers wanting for more, those new to snowshoes and those new to the beautyand spirituality of the Abbey Arboretum landscape both had reasons to celebrate the newdesignation along with the rest of us. Photo by Jenny Kutter.

6. A Kids-eye View. The Outdoor U preK winter exploration class is becoming a fanfavorite of our naturalist staff. Building and naming their “snow buddies” (when we have snow!), finding a never-ending supply of “reindeer” tracks everywhere and generally reminding all of us to continue to see the magic of winter in February is the gift we got from the 350 preschoolers who visited us this winter. Photo by Sarah Gainey.

7. A Birds-eye View. Red-winged blackbirds and Sandhill cranes are returning, Black-capped chickadees are calling, and as we approach peak bird migration in Minn-esota, the landscape feels as though it is awakening from a winter slumber. May 16 is the day our birding guides take groups out into the Abbey Arboretum to see (and hear) what they can find. Some years the morning bird count has in- cluded more than 120 species! Photo by Jan Gembol (Green heron).

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8. Travel on. A cornerstone of the Peer Resource Program is the wilderness trips offered to CSB/SJU students. Our PRP facilitators have planned and led trips to the Superior Hiking Trail (pictured), the Florida Everglades, the Great Smokey Mountains, and the Guadalupe Mountains this year, helping others get outside and explore! Photo by Tanner Rayman.

9. Floating to College. High school seniors around the country are now finalizing their journeys to college and beyond. As students choose to attend CSB or SJU, they can also choose to spend the week before orientation floating in the Boundary Waters or rock climbing on the North Shore - a great way to be Collegebound. Outdoor U Photo.

Every year our core crew of maple syrupers, the ones who are out at the sugar shack day after day after day,

do their best to predict the year’s maple syrup production. Lucky for them, there are others interested in being able to accurately predict maple syrup yields, including a group of biologists from Tufts University who are studying natural phenomena that may account for the variation in syrup production from year to year.

Maple syrup is made from the sap of the sugar maple tree. Trees are tapped to collect sap (2-5% sugar) that is then boiled down, evaporating enough water for the finished syrup to reach the proper sugar concentration (66% sugar). Sap is traditionally collected in spring when daily temperature fluctuations near freezing cause the sap to flow. Spring is also a time when the trees are converting starch to sugar, giving us a sweeter sap that makes more syrup.

Since the amount of sap collected has a big impact on how much syrup gets produced in a given year, a lot of attention has been paid to factors affecting sap flow (such as temperature) and ways to increase the amount of sap collected from the trees (including vacuum pumping systems). Consequently, there is a wealth of data linking environmental factors and sap flow, particularly when it comes to temperature.

However, temperature accounts for only part of the variation in yield between years – which makes sense, since the amount of sap produced is only one of the factors that determines syrup yield.

Joshua Rapp and Elizabeth Crone of Tufts University wanted to explore another factor involved in syrup production: the variations in sugar concentration of the sap. An increase of sugar concentration in sap from 1% to 2% decreases the amount of sap needed to make a gallon of syrup by half. Being able to predict the amount of sugar that will be present in any given year would help producers have a better idea of what the coming season will bring.

They began their investigation looking at the properties of mast seeding trees (of which sugar maples are one species). That is, once every few years, all the sugar maples in a region will synchronize their seed cycles and

flower together. They hypothesized that because mast seeding trees must acquire a certain level of stored resources (i.e. sugar) before flowering and producing seeds, it would follow that seed production could be used to predict sap’s sugar content and the season’s syrup yield.

After analyzing 16 years of syrup and seed production data from Vermont, they found that fall seeding was an effective predictor of syrup production the following spring. Syrup yield was negatively correlated with seed production in the previous year and positively correlated with seed production in the current year – that is, a good syrup season will follow a low seed-producing fall and precede a high seed-producing year.

Their study, published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, has given

maple syrup producers a new tool for predicting what the season will be

like, how much product they can expect, or if they need to

plan for a leaner year. But their results don’t explain all the variation we see in syruping; seed production accounts for only about 50% of this variation. When they added climate and weather factors in

their analysis it increased to 79%, but that still leaves an

largely unexplained 21%.Is there something else

at play? Walter Keiffer, OSB has been making maple syrup at Saint

John’s since he was a student at the prep school more than a half-century ago and has a

wealth of (scientifically unproven) observations that may explain what weather and seed production cannot. A good snow pack could make the difference between a productive season and one that warms up too quickly, a good sap run comes whenever there is less help or less free time (like Holy Week), and sugar maples seem to know when the ice goes out on Lake Sagatagan. We can’t tell you how many gallons of maple syrup we’ll make this year, but we can tell you it will be another great season out at the sugar shack!

Ella Gray is the Outdoor U environmental education fellow. Prior to this winter, she admits to knowing only that maple syrup comes from the sap of maple trees. Now she’s ready to fill her spring teaching the process and physiology of maple syrup to preK as well as college-level biology students and more.

Get Involved Saint John’s Outdoor University Saint John’s Outdoor University Staff:

Thomas Kroll Saint John’s Outdoor U Director

Abbey Arboretum Land ManagerSarah Gainey

Assistant DirectorEnvr. Education Coordinator

Kyle RauchAssistant Director

Envr. Education CoordinatorJenny Kutter

Department CoordinatorEditor, Sagatagan Seasons

Ella GrayEnvironmental Education Fellow

Dan VogelAbbey Arboretum Forest Technician

Student Staff:1 Office Assistant

2 Land Laborers7 Naturalist Aides

10 Naturalists14 OLC Staff

38 PRP Facilitators

Education Advisory Council:

John BenschoterAlison BinsfeldMike ConnollyScott Daninger

Kari DombrovskiEmily Franklin

Neil FranzJohn Geissler

Lew Grobe, OSBTom Haeg

Troy KnightMaria Surma Manka

Jon McGeeGlenn Miller

Greg Miller, OSBSteve Riendl

Stephen Saupe

Saint John’s Outdoor University

P.O. Box 3000 2346 Science Drive

Collegeville, MN 56321-3000

Main Office: 104 New Science Center

320.363.3163OutdoorU@csbsju.edu

www.csbsju.edu/OutdoorU

@stjohnsoutdooru

@stjohnsoutdooru

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Minnesota Natural History Monthly, Sept. - Nov. &Lecture Series Feb. - Apr.Free - Students (any age) & Outdoor U members 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.$5 - Nonmembers, nonstudents Tues, Mar. 17 Shoreline Restoration, Greg Berg Mon, Apr. 20 Hibernation, Clark CottonInterested in learning more about Minnesota’s natural world? Join us each month during the school year for a lecture and discussion on a variety of natural history topics. Lectures take place indoors. Check our website to see past topics or for updates to the 2013-14 lecture schedule.

Maple Syrup Festivals Saturdays, March 28 & April 11Outdoor U Members: Adult - $6 ($3 pre-reg.) | Youth/Child - FREE 1:00—4:00 p.m.Nonmembers: Adult - $11 ($6 pre-reg.) | Nonmember Youth (ages 4-17) - $6 ($3 pre-reg.)Nonmember Child - FREEJoin us for what has become our most popular event of the year! Sap collecting, syrup cooking, horse-drawn rides, demonstrations, and hot maple syrup sundaes await the whole family during this fun-filled event! Saint John’s Maple Syrup patches $2 each at the festivals - for scouts, 4H, birthday parties, clubs, or anybody who likes to collect patches! Pre-registration prices available through noon on the Friday before each festival.

Fruit at the Finish Triathlon Saturday, April 25“TriAppleOn - It’s Hard Core” 2015$15 - CSB/SJU students/faculty/staff: Early registration through Apr 5 $20 - CSB/SJU students/faculty/staff: Late registration Apr 6 - 18$25 - Community participants: Registration through Apr 18 Compete individually or in teams of three in the annual fruit-themed triathlon. Swim 0.75K, run 6K, and bike 23K in this event hosted by the Peer Resource Program, Outdoor Leadership Center, and Outdoor U. Participants receive a t-shirt with this year’s fruit-based slogan and logo.

Annual Plant & Garden Saturday, May 9Tool Sale 8:30 a.m.—12:00 p.m. or until sold out!Welcome spring by stocking up at our annual plant and garden tool sale. Outdoor U members receive 50% off on all items. Memberships are available for purchase or renewal on the day of the sale.

Spring Birding Day Saturday, May 16$12—Outdoor U members 5:30 a.m.—1:00 p.m., OR 8:00 a.m.—1:00 p.m.$16—Nonmembers Optional FREE tour of surrounding area at 1:30 p.m. Includes meals. Preregistration preferred.Spend a morning with Saint John’s Outdoor U, hiking through the Abbey Arboretum with birders during peak migration. Early risers will be stunned by the abundance of birds active early in the day. Coffee and rolls will be served at 8:00 a.m., lunch and compilation of the bird lists at 12:00 p.m. An optional tour of birding sites in the surrounding Avon Hills will begin at 1:30 p.m.

The Maple Syrup Crystal Ball Ella Gray

Visions of Spring

Prairie smoke. Outdoor U. Pasque flower. Outdoor U. Sandhill cranes and Canada geese. Bryan Sieh.

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•Kyle Rauch Joins the Outdoor U Staff..... p. 1-2

•In Pursuit Of........................................... p. 3

•Snapshots.............................................. p. 4-5

•The M

aple Syrup Crystal Ball.................. p. 6

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PAIDSaint John’s University

2346 SCIENCE DRIVE | P.O. BOX 3000COLLEGEVILLE, MN 56321-3000

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Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum is m

ore than 2,500 acres of lakes, prairie, oak savannah and forest ow

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